Prior art manually-driven wheelchairs have been provided for two-handed operation. Typically, a chair is moveably supported by two large rear wheels and two smaller forward wheels. These chairs are manually driven by a user of the chair gripping top portions of the two large rear wheels and then pushing the top portions of the wheels in a desired direction of travel to propel the wheelchair in the desired direction. If a user desires to turn the wheelchair in a gradual change in direction, the wheel on the side of the desired direction of turn is turned more slowly than the wheel of the opposite side of the wheelchair. Sharp turns may be accomplished by only rotating one of the rear wheels while the other rear wheel is held stationary, and in some cases rotating the two rear wheels in opposite directions.
Some manually-driven wheelchairs have also been provided for single-handed operation. Such wheelchairs have provided drive axles and drive wheels which are non-rotatably connected to one of the two large rear wheels. The drive wheel is aligned an on opposite side of the wheelchair from the rear wheel to which it is non-rotatably connected by the drive axle. Some of the drive axles are not collapsible, such that they require removal for the wheelchair to collapse for storage, such as in an automobile. Such prior art wheelchairs also required tooling in order to convert the wheelchair from left-handed drive to right-handed drive operation. Others of such prior art wheel chairs did not have rigid members for rigidly connecting folding portions of the drive axles. Another disadvantage of prior art wheelchairs of this type is that the right and left side wheels cannot track in a straight line because both the right and left side wheels cannot be driven simultaneously with one hand with one stroke of a user's single arm.